Yet when the first of the men gave a wild cry and came at him, he was not prepared.
A young man named Neil, he was, whom Ardahl knew right well. He and Conall had often sat and drunk with him in the warriors’ hall.
Now he came with his brown hair flying and his sword raised, whirling about his head.
Ardahl barely raised Conall’s sword in time.
The two blades met, one with maddened rage behind it, the other sheer trained reflex. Ardahl’s mind struggled and stuttered, seeing what filled the face behind the weapon. The anger. The hate.
Just like Conall had looked at him in the moment before he’d attacked. Too much like.
He could not allow what had happened then to happen again.
For good reason was he considered among the best of Chief Fearghal’s warriors. He had a good eye with a surfeit of strength behind it, and, as Dornach often said, he reacted before he thought. His da, aye, had been a charioteer, and a fine one. But Ardahl had always known he wanted to be a warrior.
To earn a place among the first of them.
He had never thought to slay his friends.
So despite the quickness of his blade, he met Neil with cautious care. Even though the man came at him howling bloody murder, he did not push back but merely met him blow for blow.
His relief, when he managed to knock Neil’s blade from his hand, was short-lived. No sooner had Neil fallen back, no sooner had Ardahl drawn a breath, than another of his friends rushed at him in turn.
He began to worry then. As his muscles screamed at him and his mind protested, he stepped back and back, now ringed by his fellow warriors. When he tripped his opponent, whose name was Dalen, and landed him on the sod, a third man came for him from behind.
He turned, barely in time.
He missed his own sword, which, when fighting, felt like an extension of his arm. Conall’s was balanced differently and made him clumsy, but he must make it serve. Sweat began gathering on his brow and trickling down into his eyes. He tossed his hair out of the way again and again.
Perhaps one of the strangest aspects of the scene was that, save for the grunts and cries of his challengers and the clangs of the weapons, it was silent. As if the whole world held its breath to await the outcome.
He could not fight like this forever. That thought appeared suddenly in his mind. Defending and not pressing, he would soon grow so spent that one of the crashing blows would break through.
Take his head.
These men, his friends, wanted his head.
Then a voice called out, “Enough. Enough!”
A fierce voice it was, and one accustomed to command. All young men there had trained beneath it and were used to obeying it.
Ardahl’s opponent, Craen, lowered his sword. Ardahl followed, even as Dornach strode up to stand between them.
The war chief, a big man, towered over even Ardahl, who possessed more height and quickness than bulk. He had a wild head of black hair and skin tanned like hide from the sun, with tattoos twining over it. His eyes, also dark and furious, stabbed at each of them before sweeping across those gathered.
“What is this?” he bellowed. “What happens here, that one o’ us should raise a blade against another?”
Neil spoke up. “Ask him that! He raised a blade to Conall. And killed him. Conall, who was a brother to us. How should we let him walk back here and take a place among us?”
“A place.” Dornach swept Ardahl with a look, down his body and up again. Ardahl stood trying to quiet his breath and hisheart, which threatened to beat out of his chest. “A place, aye, but what place? Is it no’ Conall’s? Is that no’ what the druids decreed? Would ye treat Conall so?”
“He is no’ Conall.” It was Cathair who stepped out now from among the others, hair plaited for fighting and his sword in his hand. “He slew Conall.”
Dornach faced the young man, nearly as large as he. “Ye ha’ told the priests so. And they have made their decision. Would ye go back and sneer in their faces?”
Cathair said nothing, though his jaw grew tight.
“HeisConall,” Dornach declared, pointing at Ardahl, “to all purposes. Hard as it may be, ye must treat him as such.”
